Obama’s bizarre logic amounts to — No, we kill people because we think it is wrong to kill people…

No 1142 Posted by fw, September 11, 2014

“The last 2 minutes are perhaps the most interesting: A combination of unbearable self-praise, slight megalomania and denial of the changing U.S. role in our changing world. If this is American leadership at its best – and that’s what the President believes – the world as we know it may soon crumble.” —Dr. Jan Oberg

Dr Jan Oberg, Danish born, 1951, peace activist, is the co-founder of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research and an associate professor of peace studies at Lund University, Sweden. Oberg finds no reason for “audacity of hope” in Obama’s 24-minute speech. Quite the contrary, he dismisses it as a “record low in terms of moral and intellectual analysis.”

Don’t miss the SEE ALSO link at the end of the post, linking to an interview with two experts on the Middle East who share their views about Obama’s speech.

Lund, Sweden September 11, 2014 — This speech is a record low in terms of moral and intellectual analysis: What it boils down to is war – i.e. killing every single ISIS person anywhere, people who he compares to cancer cells.

The war on terror has always been about killing terrorists but you cannot kill an ism –terrorism. To do something about the causes that compel people to become terrorists would be much more efficient.

The President has said repeatedly that a lasting solution is political, not military. The speech, however, is exclusively military – not a word of political, psychological or other insights: No, we kill people because we think it is wrong to kill people…

The speech can be seen as a proof of how utterly misguided the U.S. response to 9/11 was – had it been more intelligence and less revenge-oriented, there would neither have been a devastating Iraq war nor an ISIS.

It’s difficult to be Number One in a rank order. You only teach downward. If you are Number Twenty, there are 19 others to learn from. It seems as if the United States, inside its exceptionalist box, is now unable to learn lessons.

Obama’s ‘strategy’ for The War On Terror will, in all likelihood, lead to more terrorism and hatred of the West – I mean what will frustrated Sunnis in Iraq think about Obama? Or the Syrian civil society that doesn’t carry arms?

Not a word about international law presumably because bombing other countries is aggression when there is no threat and the ‘US is more safe today than then’.

There is a remarkable sentence where the President says that in two weeks he himself will chair a meeting of the UN Security Council! What?! Can any head of state do that??

Further, not a word about Washington’s long-term vision for a better Middle East – indicative of the absence of any such vision.

The last 2 minutes are perhaps the most interesting: A combination of unbearable self-praise, slight megalomania and denial of the changing U.S. role in our changing world.

If this is American leadership at its best – and that’s what the President believes – the world as we know it may soon crumble.

SEE ALSO

Obama Vows to Destroy Islamic State, But Expanded Strikes in Syria & Iraq Point to “Endless War” an interview with Peter Galbraith and Vijay Prashad by Democracy Now, September 11, 2014 – During the interview, Peter Galbraith, who has worked on issues involving Iraq since the 1980s said this – “I think President Obama’s strategy may be able to degrade the Islamic State, but there isn’t the prospect of putting together a unified Iraqi government that is going to win over the Sunnis and make them partners in an effort to eradicate ISIS in the Sunni areas of the country. So, this is likely to continue for many years.” Watch the 10:49-minute interview here —